Home > About the GLS > GLS Departments > Home Office

Home Office

The Home Office operates at the heart of modern Government. Although one of the oldest Departments its functions cover many of the key issues currently facing us all. It is changing fast and it has a number of key objectives including:
• Help people feel safe in their homes
• Cut crime, especially violent, alcohol and drug-related crime
• Lead visible, responsive and accountable policing
• Support the efficient and effective delivery of justice
• Protect the public from terrorism
• Secure our borders and control migration for the benefit of our country; and
• Safeguard identity and the privileges of citizenship

The work that we do affects people’s daily lives. It is often in the media and public eye. It is regularly subjected to Parliamentary scrutiny. If you join us, you will advise senior administrators and Ministers on issues that are the focus of public attention, many of which involve sensitive legal and policy questions. The following are only some of the areas for which the Home Office is responsible:

• crime prevention
• the police
• controlled drugs
• prevention of terrorism
• extradition
• firearms control
• immigration and asylum
• citizenship and nationality

Work of the Legal Team

As Home Office lawyers, we advise Ministers and officials on all areas of work covered by the Home Office, and also advise Ministers and officials in the Northern Ireland Office. The role of the NIO is to support the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in securing a lasting peace, based on the Good Friday Agreement, in which the rights and identities of all traditions in Northern Ireland are fully respected and safeguarded and in which a safe, stable, just, open and tolerant society can thrive and prosper.

We are involved at all stages of taking Bills through Parliament. We work closely with those responsible for the formulation of policy, we instruct Parliamentary Counsel (who draft Government Bills), we brief Ministers on the legislation and we attend Parliament during all stages of a Bill’s passage. In recent Parliamentary sessions we have worked on a number of Bills, strengthening our borders, countering terrorism and organised crime and helping the police and communities tackle crime.

We draft subordinate legislation, much of it related to implementing European Union legislation.

We provide advice to our clients on a whole range of legal issues and in the context of a changing legal landscape, including the Human Rights Act 1998 and Data Protection Act 1998 and Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Although we are not litigators, we provide advice to our clients on domestic litigation which is of interest to Ministers because it is high profile, politically sensitive or might require a change of policy on the part of the Home Office.

We are involved in all Home Office litigation before the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights and we attend hearings in Luxembourg and Strasbourg. Again, we are not primarily responsible for conducting the litigation but provide advice to our clients on the policy issues arising in the litigation.

Vacancies

Qualified lawyer vacancies for posts in this department are advertised through the central GLS scheme. All vacancies are posted on the Civil Service Recruitment Gateway (this link will open in a new window).

Trainee Solicitors and Pupil Barristers are occasionally recruited through the GLS Legal Trainee Scheme.

Further Information

Read more about career development within the Home Office
(Adobe Acrobat pdf, 707kb).

Read what our new recruits say about us.

You can also visit the Home Office website: www.homeoffice.gov.uk.